Curatti

Social Platforms Move at Warp Speed – How to Get Heard

  • Jan Gordon

    • By Lee Traupel

    No business can grow in today’s always on Digital Eco System unless you are a social platform competent brand.

    Marshall McCluhan was prescient beyond his years when he published: “Understanding Media: The Extension of Man.”  Platform and message are symbiotic.

    Your brand story has to be optimized for each platform, with visuals and content in context to increase the likelihood of your updates getting heard.

    But, know going in, these platforms are changing constantly and there is a burdened cost for each one.

    Twitter’s recent announcement about their “Highlight” service is a good example of a platform in flux. They’ve had five product marketing execs in the same number of years.

    Facebook constantly makes changes to their newsfeed, what’s in, what’s out, it’s endless…….

    Channel glut is not a good thing: pick one or two and build out a meaningful presence, coupled with the absolute best content you can create and curate.

    LinkedIn is the Defacto Best Social Platform for B2B Focused Brands

     

    Moving the Meter with Your Brand on Twitter

    Twitter has “jumped the shark” – it’s go/go insane growth days are probably behind it. But, it’s still the number two platform for B2B brands behind LinkedIn for good reason. If you are targeting other businesses you want to be on this platform.

    But, as bulleted below, it’s pretty hard to scale up a meaningful presence on Twitter without using some kind of account optimization. I don’t mean pushing out broadcasts via HootSuite, you want to use a platform to automate Follows and Unfollows, some of the back end drudgery that’s going to help you grow.

    Pinterest is the Best Platform for Reaching today’s Connected Female Demographic

    Success on Pinterest really comes down to curating images and videos. Everything else pales in comparison. And, like Twitter and Facebook, Pinterest is embracing direct sales right on their platform and targeted advertising. Expect this direct on platform sales model trend to accelerate as they look for more ways to monetize their platform.

    Facebook will be 2000 Pound Gorilla Your Brand Needs to Optimize for a Long Time

    For some brands Facebook has become the “social media Secret Santa” – you know you’re getting something but not quite sure what. Look for patterns in the data. Facebook is a twenty pound gorilla you have to pay some attention to, even if you are targeting other businesses.

    Facebook has finally made it clear that brands have to pay to play on the platform: organic reach with consumers is still possible. But, you need to distinguish and optimize Earned Media (organic updates) on Facebook vs. Paid Media to be successful.

    Seven Critical Marketing Maxims that Drive Brand Engagement on Facebook

    1. Engaged people are your target on Facebook, not fans, likes or other artificial measurements. Understand what your customers care about, what’s going to inspire and resonate with them. Address their needs and blend in some creativity so your profile is not boring.
    2. Paid and earned media need to be integrated. Test “organic” posts that are not promoted. Then, understand which of these is performing well on it’s own and amplify these with advertising.
    3. Share great content. Lousy content is not going to drive engagment and that means don’t share the same stock images, videos or updates being done by others. Take risks with your content and your community manager needs to be aware of what’s working and what isn’t.
    4. Build strategic alliances with key bloggers, thought leaders and industry pundits and do what you have to do to motivate them to engage with your brands. That’s Fed Exing in chocolate, champagne, with hand written notes or more. That’s not pushing a “free” use of our product for a month email BTW.
    5. Facebook has shifted from a textual platform to a full blown multimedia channel. Be visual and media savvy. Chunk up your video content and share it aggressively and don’t exceed more than two minutes per each video. Video should garner attention and drive traffic back to your site, not tell your brand’s story in ten minutes.
    6. Savvy community management determines success or failure on this platform. A great community manager is your brand voice on this and other social platforms. They must know how to engage with the community, understand when to escalate a customer service issue up the food chain, be personable and articulate, have some technical training – expect to pay these people well, they are in demand and good ones are hard to find.
    7. Profile best practices are important and not mundane; integration with other apps and services underscore your brand’s sophistication, use Facebook’s profile and cover photo creatively.

    Facebook Advertising Best Practices

    Facebook is in an arms race with Google and aggressively buying demographic information from data providers and bundling these with their own data to drive value for advertisers. You are getting “reach” and “scale” (in marketing speak) across hundreds of millions of users and to date, Google has been the only viable alternative.

    Facebook has data on just under 1.7 Billion users. The targeting is powerful, with two options, cost per click or impressions and your ad spend may be significantly lower than PPC.  There are no hard and fast cost metrics, these vary tremendously; but, in general expect to pay $.50-3. per click or lower if using impression based ads.

    Anticipate spending 3-5 hours setting up an ad campaign and if your media spend is more than $500. a month it’s well worth your time to use Atlas (the rebranded Ad Platform).  Test your targeting (interests, age, marital status, zipcode) and early on you don’t need to use the Ad Platform as long as you are being conservative with your ad spend (under $50 a day).

    One of the most powerful drivers for brands advertising with Facebook is generating “social referrals” – there is no other platform that can generate this kind of traffic; i.e. friends referring a link or product recommendation to their friends.

    1. Establish goals; Page Likes, Visits to your web site, Fan engagement on your page. Facebook’s Ad processes will map to these goals, so choose carefully.
    2. Don’t every buy Followers for any social account commercially. Use Facebook’s advertising to build up your Fan base initially. The more Likes you have for a page the more robust your page looks and this will give you broader “reach” (more fans) for an ad campaign that is more offer focused.
    3. Use Facebook Offers Campaigns to drive list signups; a free ebook in exchange for an email address works great.
    4. Be very clear with a call to action embedded in your ad. Facebook users are distracted and confusion kills ROI.
    5. Test Activated Sponsored Stories (in the Newsfeed). Yes, you are paying Facebook for the privilege of making sure you get “seen” on the platform.
    6. If you are promoting a Facebook page the Title of your page will be used for the Headline of your ad. Customize the Headline and know, like any ad campaign, the Headline will determine success or failure.
    7. Control Your Ad Costs: you can bid on clicks, impressions or a specific action (download). Facebook’s automatic bid option may cost you money: manually bidding for clicks or optimizations can be cheaper.
    8. Choose a Daily or Lifetime Budget and note each campaign has a separate budget.
    9. Daily Media Spend it set at $50. but you can go in an change your daily ad budget at any time after a Campaign is set up.
    10. Facebook has powerful built in targeting: age, gender, location, marital status, language, education and more; test and refine these.

    Why Tech Savvy Brands are Embracing Social Selling

    Twitter and Facebook are testing buy buttons with select accounts and Facebook is now supporting buying and selling products directly in Groups. For good reason, today’s retail shoppers have phones in hand and use social media to find deals and information.

    Company’s like Stripe and Gumroad are incorporating buy functionality on the fly, enabling brands to sell within apps and on any/all platforms. Even second tier social platforms like Snapchat are embracing early stage social eCommerce, adding “snapcash” to its native functionality.

    Anticipate these trends will accelerate moving forward. Again, social media is changing from a two dimensional marketing and engagement platform to eCommerce direct social selling – a social platform is a must have for any brand that wants to find new sources for commerce.

    Tech savvy brands are moving to social selling: first generation fan/followers build out is done and the more sophisticated brands are leveraging social influence to convert sales.

    Ten Critical Caveats for Social Selling Once your Platforms are Optimized

    1. Social is “smart selling” as long as your brand is on the right platform. Consumer focused: Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube & second tier platforms like Tumblr. For B2B brands: Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook as an adjunct channel.
    2. Determine the optimum way to connect with your prospects: @at messages on Twitter are much better than “DMs” (direct messages); many don’t even monitor the latter. LinkedIn is a great way to find and connect with professionals; but, do it directly with a personalized invitation to connect. Cut and paste messaging is not an optimum way to build rapport and may generate spam complaints.
    3. Create an attention grabbing profile: underscoring what makes you business or personal brand different from others, updated frequently, with some baked in personality. #dontbeboring
    4. Use social to front end load your brand reach: Twitter’s Advanced Search is a great way to find conversations and individuals and then couple this with direct contact via LinkedIn.
    5. Contribute to conversations on social to drive engagement. Don’t 24/7 broadcast or use social selling as a one call close. It’s about building relationships.
    6. Don’t use generic pitches to prospects with a link to your home page. Share a link that relates to their specific problems. Social selling is about personalization.
    7. Your Sales Team needs to know social selling has a sales cycle like any sales channel: research issues, identify contacts, engage and then reach out with a personal message.
    8. Social media platforms represent critical opportunities to shape consumer experience around your brand but it takes frequency (repetition) to get their attention.
    9. Social selling is moving to real time – inculcate direct social sales right on the platform of choice to negate sales funnel drop offs and to leverage the always on immediacy of social media.
    10. Optimization variables you should be measuring: which social network, what type of content performs best, are you reaching target customers/companies, what relationships have the most impact?

    Social Platforms are Algorithmic Driven Beasts Moving at Warp Speed

    All of these channels “serve” an investor base or the public and constantly shift their algorithms just like Google.

    Some publishers are now abandoning their own web sites and going “all in” on social. This is a risky strategy and fraught with peril – your business is renting on these platforms and you don’t own your intellectual property.

    There are no hard and fast rules for being successful on these top tier social platforms other than sharing meaningful content tailored for the unique attributes of each platform.

    Select a platform that maps to your demographics, hire and train a great community manager, again, share great content and embed social selling once your business has reached critical mass.

    Like any marketing activity, look for patterns and back end conversions that map to a specific platform.

    Be patient, there are no instant fame and fortune formulas, unless your a celebrity du jour of the month.

    Be creative when/where you can. These platforms are all crowded and noisy – standing out necessitates more than algorithmic geeky “thought leader” driven techniques. Self included. #goforth

     

    Originally published as Social Platforms are Algorithmic Driven Beasts Moving at Warp Speed – How to Get Heard by Lee Traupel of Linked Media Group, and re-published with permission.

    Lee is a Huff Post Contributor | Content Strategist| Design Decoder | ROI Herder | Mojo Maker | Techy Not Coder | UX/UI Romanticist | Just Delta Blues | Digital strategist – market honed digital navigator for brands big and small. You can connect with Lee on Twitter or Linked Media Group.

     

    Lead/Featured Image: Copyright: ‘http://www.123rf.com/profile_vska’ / 123RF Stock Photo

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    Jan Gordon

    CEO at Curatti
    Top 100 #Socialmedia Global Influencer | CEO of Curatti, Publisher of #B2B #Content | Author/ Digital Marketing Strategist | http://appearoo.com/JanGordon